INDUE - The Cashless Welfare Card?

‘Brutal’: Marcia Langton, early backer of welfare card, savages its roll out

One of the few Indigenous community leaders who backed the cashless welfare card in its infancy has changed her mind, accusing the government of running a “brutal” program that has become little more than a “big stick to punish the poor”.

The government hopes to put 22,500 people in the Northern Territory and Cape York on a similar trial program that quarantines 50 per cent of users’ funds.

“It is a tragedy that the Department of Social Services, the Department of Human Services and others responsible have not implemented the scheme in accordance with the original design and in accordance with the commitments they made to those community people, to those elders, to those leaders,” the Australian Indigenous Studies chair said on Wednesday.

“Instead of sticking to the plan, minister after minister, and bureaucrat after bureaucrat, have wielded a big stick to punish the poor. It’s pointless. And it’s brutal. And I’m – I’m very disappointed.”

A spokeswoman for Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said there had been hundreds of consultations sessions in trial areas and that the card does not punish those on welfare.

“The cashless debit card is not punitive,” the spokeswoman said. “It is a financial management tool that is helping people stabilise their lives, supporting them to demonstrate personal responsibility, helping to encourage financial independence and is having a positive impact on the wider community.”

Cashless welfare card trials have run since 2016 in the Ceduna region in South Australia, East Kimberley and the Goldfields region in Western Australia, and in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland.